Notes

Atlantic readers from across the political spectrum discuss the results of the U.S. presidential election and what it means for the country. (The Atlantic’s overall stance on Donald Trump remains firm.) To join in, especially if you’re a Trump voter, please send us a note: hello@theatlantic.com.

So far we have heard from readers—here and here—who empathize with the grievances of Trump voters but who couldn’t support the demagogue themselves. Now let’s here from a Trump voter, Alan. At first he was a very reluctant to back the “deplorable” Trump but ultimately did so because of the following reasons: the “bigot” stigma is tossed around too freely by leftist whites; too many liberal commentators are too smug; he fears that cisgender men will exploit trans-inclusive bathrooms; and, perhaps most of all, he’s outraged and worried about the new campus PC.

Here’s Alan detailing those views (the bracketed notes are mine):

Ben is the first writer to, in my opinion, hit the nail on the head. I started out as a Never Trumper and actually still deplore the man. But on Tuesday I voted for him.

My wife is Mexican-American, my children ½ white ½ Hispanic. I have nieces who are ½ African-American. I hate bigotry and take it very, very, seriously. So when I hear Charlie Rangel say “bigots no longer use racial slurs; they talk about balanced budgets and the line item veto,” it infuriates me. [CB: I couldn’t find a quote similar to that, but Rangel is known for his divisive rhetoric. Update: Alan points to this alleged quote from Rangel from 1994 that he said he paraphrased, but I wouldn’t trust the source, since the alleged quote isn’t really found elsewhere.] Accusations of racism are being thrown about as political weapons (mostly by white liberals) in a way that belittles the seriousness of bigotry.

I don’t like the economic policies of Barack Obama, but if I disagree with him and anyone on the left hears me I will immediately be branded a bigot. I also believe that at a time when the economy is soft with little-to-no job growth [latest jobs report here], it’s a bad time to have high immigration; it drives down wages for all Americans: White, Black, Asian, or Hispanic.

My wife’s hometown of El Paso is a perfect example, with high unemployment [higher than Texas but lower than the U.S.] and low wages. I don’t think Obama cares; his aim is to change the electorate in a way that favors Democrats and the resulting inevitable ethnic tension plays right into his hands.

We like to believe the electorate chooses our leaders, but today our leaders are choosing the electorate. It’s anti-democratic, no matter the skin color of those involved.

Next, I have an advanced degree and own my own business. I have a very “live and let live” attitude about gay marriage and routinely prepare tax returns for gay couples. But I’m a Catholic and a Texan, so I’m accustomed to being disparaged on the news each night by commenters on the left referring to people like me, who they don’t even know, as hicks, yahoos, and haters (by Chris Matthews, Paul Krugman, Tom Friedman, Bill Maher, Joy Behar).

I deplore the thought that men should be allowed in women’s restrooms—not because I have any problem with those who are biologically male but identify as female (I suspect this relatively small group to be mostly comprised of gentle souls), but I have two young daughters, and I’m terrified of the much larger group of fully heterosexual, hormone-intoxicated young men (of whom I was a member, around the age of 14) that will be the first into the women’s restroom peeking through the doors on the stalls. But no one, and I mean no one, on the left will even brook a discussion on the topic [Notes discussion here]. How about an accommodation where more single-use restrooms are utilized? “No, this must be forced upon the haters no matter what.”

Finally, I’m convinced the social justice movement on campuses is the primary driver of the Trump victory. My college-age daughter constantly hears talk of white privilege and racial identity, of separate dorms for separate races (somewhere in heaven Martin Luther King Jr is hanging his head and crying). She also hears how it’s a microaggression to speak of the U.S. as a melting pot (as a multi-ethnic American, imagine how this makes her feel). I hate identity politics, and I fear for the future of my daughters as a result.

When everything is about identity politics, is the left really surprised that on Tuesday millions of white Americans, for the first time ever, voted as “white”? If you want identity politics, identity politics is what you will get.

I know many on the left will read this and ask how I could therefore possibly vote for Trump. The answer is that the right didn’t create it; the left did. It constitutes the entire word view of the left today. The right is reacting. Maybe now that you see what you have created, you will turn back to promoting a vision of the world where race, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity fade away and we all become individuals again. Or maybe I’m just so sick of being called a bigot that my anger at the authoritarian left has pushed me to support this seriously flawed man.

What do you think of Alan’s argument? Drop us a note and we’ll continue the debate. Update from Kevin, who thinks Alan “misses the forest for the trees”:

“Identity politics” (and so-called political correctness) makes an easy target for people who are either in, or sympathize with, a ruling majority. Fox News figured that out long ago, and they’ve made bank on it—War on Christmas, anyone?

Against Alan’s point, though, I would argue that identity politics is simply a newer name (and partial aspect) for what we used to call the class struggle: of those who have been historically disadvantaged against those who have unfairly benefitted. Perhaps even many of those who now organize primarily as women, African-Americans, or Latinos don’t fully realize that their efforts represent the only way the majority has allowed, even partially, a conversation about unfairness that should actually be subsumed under its largest category: the topic of reparations.

Here are some statistics from a Forbes (!) article on the gap between minority and majority wealth:

Even the New Deal and G.I. Bill programs, which led to the housing wealth that forms the majority of whites’ advantage in savings, deliberately and systematically excluded minorities, as Ta-Nehisi Coates has explained at length in The Atlantic. And of course, Native Americans were the original victims of majority expropriation, while women have been deprived by a parallel type of discrimination that expressed itself mainly through social norms about family structure.

Would Alan prefer an honest conversation about how genocide, slavery, Jim Crow, patriarchal family structures, and New Deal and G.I. Bill discrimination led to the incredible wealth gaps between whites and minorities and women that still persist through multiple generations? Followed by an honest conversation about how the majority can best repair the effects of the unfair advantage it was given—and still gets?

Those are the conversations that have a chance to get to the heart of the matter, and I would hope he would want to be part of them. If we make progress on such larger questions, I can promise him that the identity politics will subside to a matter of festive quasi-ethnic coloration, like today’s Polka Festivals and St. Patrick’s Day parades, within a just and multicultural society at peace with itself.

Update: Alan has a very thorough rebuttal, and I’ll keep my interjections (via brackets) to a bare minimum this time:

Soft Job Market

You picked a single monthly jobs report to contradict my point, & you failed to mention that it takes 145,000 jobs per month just to keep up with new workers entering the workforce. The unemployment rate is less important, in my view & the view of many others, than the workforce participation rate, which is way down since 2007. Half of this number is from baby boomers retiring, but half of it isn’t.

El Paso

You alluded to unemployment in El Paso, which, as I stated, is not (in my view & the view of many others) the best measure. You ignored my comment about low wages in El Paso. The poverty rate there is 20.1%, compared to 17.5% in all of Texas and 14.5% nationally. It’s much the same along the entire Texas border.

Obama & Identity Politics

In my comments where you interjected your defense of Obama, I had said nothing about identity politics—that came later. I said he was manipulating border security to increase Democratic voters. Then he refers to those who disagree as bigots (ok, so it does have to do with identity politics).

It’s certainly true that Obama typically stays above the fray concerning identity politics, but he certainly doesn’t keep his surrogates from pursuing it. Remember the ridiculous War on Women? [Yep, and I lampooned that terminology at the time.]

But then at times, Obama participates himself. Remember his comments regarding poor whites “bitterly clinging to their guns & religion”? Remember his 2010 comments on Univision where he said: “If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We're gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us….”?

Remember how, after the floods in Louisiana, it took him a week to visit, pausing his golf vacation at Martha’s Vineyard just long enough to send an advisory to the state to not discriminate against minorities during the cleanup? The media ignored it, no help came, so the “Cajun Navy” took over: [CB: I really wish I could post the handful of photos that Alan attached, but we don’t have the copyright. The four moving photos show white folks helping black folks, and vice versa.]

I don’t disagree with any of the data Kevin presents, nor do I disagree with the existence of any of the government programs he mentions. I also absolutely agree that slavery, Jim Crow, etc. are the sole source of all the problems of the African-American community, & I would love to have a conversation about those issues with him.

It’s just that, other than his first paragraph, he doesn’t really address anything I said. He implies that I get all my news from Fox, but I don’t watch Fox at all (I despise Shawn Hannity & think Bill O’Reilly is a blustering fool), so he’s implies characteristics to me that are false.

Identity politics may or may not be an “easy target,” but what does that mean? My point is that, just as I’m sure he hates it when he’s the victim of a racial slur, so do I when I’m referred to as a bigot, when my whole life demonstrates the opposite. (In fact, over the course of my career, I’ve hired many African-Americans & fired two white managers & replaced them with African-American managers.)

All unsupported accusations of bigotry are counter-constructive, & they set us all back. As I said, I don’t think the culprits here are usually African-Americans (Charlie Rangel not withstanding). I think it’s a game of the white liberal left in an effort to gain political power. It’s very revealing that Trump, & Republicans generally, support school vouchers for low income minorities trapped in failing public schools, yet Democrats fight them with all their might. Why? Control.

Two Parent Privilege

I have no doubt you’d love for me to discuss this, so you can find more selective data to throw back at me. Why don’t you bring it up? You’re the reporter. But if you did, you’re job at The Atlantic would be so gone.

At the unlikely risk of that: The most prominent reference to “two-parent privilege” I could find is a National Review piece from Dennis Prager called “The Fallacy of ‘White Privilege.’” Money quote:

[T]here are a host of privileges that dwarf “white privilege.” A huge one is Two-Parent Privilege. If you are raised by a father and mother, you enter adulthood with more privileges than anyone else in American society, irrespective of race, ethnicity, or sex. That’s why the poverty rate among two-parent black families is only 7 percent. Compare that with a 22 percent poverty rate among whites in single-parent homes. Obviously the two-parent home is the decisive “privilege.”

Back to Alan:

Summary:

So I’m through with “Trumpsplaining.” The events of the last few days, & the response of the media, have convinced me that the left has simply doubled-down. So be it. They’re building a path to Trump/Pence 2020.

But here’s an event that occurred locally in the last couple of days that I’d like you & Kevin to discuss:

Victoria Smith, the daughter of one of the Dallas police officers killed during the July 7 ambush was told she was no longer invited to hit an honorary serve at a volleyball game at Southern Methodist University. In a Facebook post where the e-mail from SMU is reproduced, the college says: "In light of recent events and diversity within the SMU community, the demonstration could be deemed insensitive”

… the recent events apparently being the election. SMU is now backpedaling as fast as it can since the news broke.

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Update from Molly, who dissents:

You didn’t even allow a pro-Trumper to express himself without interjecting your [facts], and your comment about [seeing the latest jobs reports] indicates that you either don’t understand or are not willing to understand the decades of devastation resulting from structural unemployment. Did you read the jobs report, or stop after the first page? Check out the establishment data on page 5. Do note the winners and losers.

Since I’m already here on a high horse, I’d love to share my perspective. The best word to describe my feelings is ambivalent, torn between people I love who voted for Trump and people I love who voted for Clinton. Unfortunately, that ambivalence and self-inflicted need to play devil’s advocate have already made me feel unwelcome by both sides.

Currently, my glass case of emotions include:

Happiness for my family, who have been ignored by Clinton’s, Bush’s, and Obama’s policies and truly believe that Trump’s CEO style will lower their health insurance premiums and bring back manufacturing jobs

Sadness for my friends and colleagues, who are confused, scared, and rightfully disgusted by this election

Frustration with the RNC, DNC, and DC, which once again forced us to choose between economic and social issues

Anger that bigoted haters spreading vitriol are claiming that they speak on behalf of the right

Anger that protesters burning effigies of democratically elected presidents are claiming that they speak on behalf of the left

Annoyance that both sides of the media don’t seem to be owning their role in this divisiveness

And hope/fear, which are basically two sides of the same coin.

We got ourselves into this situation together. The only way we get ourselves out … is together.

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If you’re still reading at this point, here’s a note (emailed and posted before the updates from Kevin, Alan, and Molly) from reader D.A. about the perilously close distance between white identity politics and white supremacy:

This question may become the biggest one in America politics, post-Trump:

Is it possible to have a “white identity” politics that is not inherently a politics of white supremacy?

The best hypothetical I can think of is this:

Suppose you are studying a proposed piece of legislation. First you ask yourself:

How will this impact people?

Then:

How will this impact white people?

Now reverse the order in which you ask the questions.

Now substitute any other political identity group for “white.”

Is there a difference between a white person asking:

“How will this impact people like me?”

vs.

“How will this impact white people?”

Can we find the line (if it even exists) between white identity politics and white supremacy somewhere in that hypothetical? I haven’t yet. So “white identity vs. white supremacy” will likely be the big American political question of the next decade (unless economic status becomes a more important marker of identity than race).

This next reader, Nav, accuses Trump voters of a big double standard:

Several readers and commentators appear to hold that the principal reason for Trump's victory is the rise of identity politics on the left. Personally, I think that the evidence is pretty weak. However, regardless of the truth of the theory, I have questions.

If the rise of identity politics is a problem, how likely is it that voting for the bigotry-adjacent candidate is going to reduce the role of identity in political discourse? To put it another way, if you believe that voting for Trump is a reasonable response to being perceived as bigoted, what is a reasonable response to the election of a candidate that has a very small, but very vocal, set of white supremacists filled with delight?

I doubt voting for the dog-whistle candidate is going achieve the goal of reducing identity politics, nor do I believe that deeper embrace of identity politics (even though I’m generally a fan of the ethical argument) will reduce bigotry. History is not exactly replete with examples where people change their minds only after the opposing view gets sufficiently extreme.

And finally, Eric offers a good-faith challenge to Trump voters:

I am willing to take many Trump supporters at their word that they do not personally harbor any animosity towards women or minorities. But the truth is that Donald Trump certainly does. It is clear that he believes that racist and sexist stereotypes accurately describe the world and he supports polices based on these stereotypes.

And though I can understand being upset or disturbed by the worst excesses of the political correctness movement, I cannot understand the worldview that believes these excesses are worse than a president who has openly advocated using the state to target minority groups [such as Muslims]. I can understand how someone could think that Twitter mobs are an inappropriate response to blackface Halloween costumes, even though I do think those costumes are racist. To react to to those Twitter mobs by making a cruel, arrogant, narcissistic, petty, ignorant, racist, sexist, pathological lier the most powerful man in the world seems mean and shortsighted.

I have heard from many Trump supporters that he does not really mean to do the things he says. I personally take him at face value, but I have a challenge to these supposedly non-bigoted Trump supporters: If and when Trump does the things he says he would—target Muslims for surveillance, create a deportation force to hunt down all illegal immigrants, create a national stop and frisk policy, target journalists for writing “nasty” articles about him, arrest and imprison political opponents—will they stand up to him?

Will they write their congressmen? Will they march in the street to protest the violation of their fellow citizen’s rights? Will they stand arm in arm with their neighbors to protect them? Will they quietly acquiesce? Or will they, as I personally suspect, actively support his actions?

As brilliant and scathing as Alec Baldwin was with his portrayal of Donald Trump this year, SNL’s “Black Jeopardy” sketch was ultimately the real standout—for its humor and its humanity:

At the onset of our dialogue with Clinton votes and Trump votes—or at least voters who understand where some Trump voters are coming from—reader Ben diagnosed what he sees as a shortcoming of the left right now: an over-willingness to stigmatize people as bigots for what may just be misplaced or simply misunderstood views, rather than active hatred. (One of the examples Ben cited was the successful effort to get Brendan Eich fired as CEO of Mozilla because he donated to the admittedly awful Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California for a time.) This reader agrees with Ben:

He has diagnosed a significant reason people voted for Mr. Trump. I’m a conservative who did not end up voting for him, but like Ben, I thought about it a lot. The left has adopted bully tactics through their control of the media and the universities. Rather than deal with the right’s arguments, they use creative name-calling: racist, xenophobic, homophobic, hicks. I can tell you for a fact, neither myself nor any of my conservative friends and family are any of those things, and yet we’re called that frequently. What in the world?

Mrs. Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment and Mr. Podesta’s e-mails that threw Catholics and Evangelicals under the bus are perfect examples of this moral snobbishness. The problem is, we won’t change our minds because you force us to celebrate homosexual unions or call us names in front of the entire nation. If you on the left want to change our minds, you need to understand us, and vice versa. Our country will keep splitting, the less we listen respectfully to each other.

People are angry. Unfortunately, the only Republican candidate who showed anger to match was Mr. Trump.

And unfortunately that anger morphed into a lot of ugly rhetoric and demagogic stances. Was that inevitable, or could such anger be channeled into something more constructive? Hopefully the actual mantle of responsibility in office will temper Trump—though a compromising Trump could actually inflame Trumpism, because his supporters will witness how even Trump won’t be able to enact extreme measures like building a wall across Mexico and deporting 11 million illegal immigrants.

Circling back to Ben’s argument, this next reader has a line that popped out in particular: “We cannot fight systemic issues by punishing individuals.” His closing line is also strong, and his overall argument is really nuanced:

My name is Dan, and I’ve been following your coverage of the campaign closely this year, especially the Trump Time Capsule series. I greatly appreciate the discussion The Atlantic has been hosting through reader emails and the insights they have produced. Your recent emails from Ben and Adam—about the backlash against the left’s “bullying” contrasted with the historic and continuing oppression and marginalization of minority groups—struck a chord.

I’ve heard many angry people lamenting that Trump was elected because straight white people could not bear the loss of their privilege. It wasn’t until I read Ben’s email that I realized that the bullying coming from the left is exactly what the erosion of straight white male privilege looks like.

We might define privilege as “not having to face injustice because you are treated as an embodiment of your group rather than an individual” (an inelegant definition for what is perhaps an inelegant term). In these instances of public shaming, people whose behavior would previously have been ignored due to their social privilege are instead faced with an unjust reaction because they are treated as the embodiment of straight, white, or male oppression.

While these injustices are relatively few compared to the everyday injustices faced by marginalized groups—for every person who lost their job [because of real or perceived bigotry], how many were never given a chance to be hired?—they are legitimately unjust. And they must be addressed as a consequence of minority groups gaining social power and the erosion of majority privilege. We cannot fight systemic issues by punishing individuals. I believe we should publicize these cases as concrete examples of systemic problems, but hounding people out of their jobs is unjust and unproductive.

Still, this is an issue that can either be addressed with discussion and debate within our newly developing social dynamics, or the privileged can fight back against it by re-empowering white supremacy within our society. With the election of Trump, white America has chosen to do the latter because even this small taste of the injustice you might face when you lack privilege has proved far more important to them than equality, justice, and acceptance for their fellow citizens.

Or in other words, two wrongs don’t make a right, even if one of those wrongs—outright bigotry—is much worse than the other—an over-willingness to label someone a bigot. And the latter is counterproductive to fighting the former.

A pastor also responds to Ben’s note:

I’m a moderate-liberal Democrat who has been in ministry in deep red parts of Texas for 15 years. Each of the four churches I’ve served has been heavily conservative and heavily Republican.

Meanwhile, I have pretty much been in the closet with my political beliefs. There was the year that it was rather obvious, though: I was the only Democratic voter in a primary election. The Republican judges had to go to the back to get the Democratic judges so I could vote. And, my church was the precinct voting place, “Hey, George! Get up here! The pastor needs to vote!”

Ben makes an interesting observation, but a large part of the Trump vote simply is from Republicans who assign various reasons for their leanings against Democrats: arrogant, judgmental liberals; lying liberals; crooked Hillary; government “handouts” (except for the ones they receive, of course); baby killing; big spending; and others.

However, all of these are subsumed under the simple fact that a poor Republican candidate beat a weak Democratic candidate.

This next reader also has a simple reason for Trump’s success:

I was not a Trump supporter, but I voted for him on Tuesday. I’m a big city refugee—Manhattan, Chicago, and Houston—now happily living in the rolling hills of rural NE Oklahoma.

In trying to empathize with the rationale of Trump supporters, Ben has missed the simplest of all. Every voter wants an honest government, and a government for the people. We all want an end to politics-as-usual. Trump is the outsider, promising to be the outsider, just as Obama did in 2008. Those of us here, who voted for POTUS Obama in 2008/’12, feel let down. We’ve seen some social progress, but failures everywhere else, and we are willing to give the outsider the benefit of the doubt.

Consider this: Oklahoma Evangelicals came out for Trump, actually crowded the polling stations, despite his playboy ways and lewd talk. They didn’t rush to the polls because of the usual divisive social issues; they rarely do. They just want someone, anyone, to make a change against politics as usual.

Here’s our last reader for now, Sean, who echoes some of the themes above:

A little background information: I am a 27-year-old Wisconsinite that voted for Hillary Clinton. I consider myself a middle-of-the-road moderate, simply because I find the idea silly and impossible that one party has the correct answer for every single issue our country and world faces.

I’m still processing the events of the election result, but I feel like this is a perfect time to submit my first email to The Atlantic. Although readers Ben and Adam had unique insights as to why some people were compelled to vote for Trump, I respectfully disagree. I think there are two reasons for Trump's victory:

First, I believe it was simply a backlash to the American “system.” I believe Trump won the election because most people my age and younger have already accepted/agree with socially progressive ideas but yearned for a change in economic stances and the “status quo.” Trump represented a change in the political machine while Clinton basically represented more of the same political gamesmanship. Progressive social ideology was not enough for Clinton to court enough voters because again, I think most young voters have already accepted progressive ideas to be the norm. Now, why a lot of my peers think Trump will be a good change to the political machine (which I do not agree with) is a different discussion ...

Second, I think that this is the first time a vast majority of the electorate has ranked a candidate’s message above that candidates “character.” By that, I mean that a lot of people were willing to bite the bullet for Trump’s glaring character flaws for the chance to try a new approach to the American experiment. In previous elections, it was always assumed that the two candidates would be extremely polished, and would be immediately disqualified for saying some of the things Trump said. However, I think he was able to brush past these traditional political land mines due to an unexpected effect from my first point: a lot of people were sick and tired of traditional politics. They put much more weight into a candidates political message rather than their personal character.

Update from Dan, who gets the last word here:

Thank you so much for your kind words about my note on feeling empathy for Trump supporters. I do take issue with the implication of what you wrote in the “in other words” section following my note:

Or in other words, two wrongs don’t make a right, even if one of those wrongs—outright bigotry—is much worse than the other—an over-willingness to label someone a bigot. And the latter is counterproductive to fighting the former.

Perhaps I was not clear enough, but my belief is that liberal bullying of perceived bigots is only a tangential effect of progress in dismantling system of social privilege and power. It is not part of the work to dismantle those systems; it is merely the result of marginalized people finally gaining the power to express their anger at those who have been collectively furthering their oppression in individually minor ways. It is a problem that will inevitable arise with a new balance of social power, especially without any widespread engagement from the right or even acceptance of the reality of these concrete issues of marginalization and oppression, without some sort of “truth and reconciliation” for American society.

It is not actually a part of the work that is being done to address these issues, so I disagree with the implication I see in your comment that this behavior must be stopped before we can continue making progress. If people oppose the dismantling of systems of privilege because of these cases of bullying, and instead support the resurgence of straight white male supremacy, that is a failure on their part. It is a failure of perspective and values and they are responsible for that failure.

And that failure of perspective brings me to the email from the person who “voted for the wrecking ball.” That person knows so many things about this country. That person knows exactly what you need to do to succeed and overcome adversity. That person knows exactly how all their fellow white people feel about marginalized groups and how they would treat marginalized people if those people could only be just a little better.

That person does not know what they do not know about the experience of life as a marginalized person in this country. That person does not know that the opportunities his parents and their parents and their parents had to pursue the right kind of life were not afforded to the parents of others. That person does not know that the issues marginalized people complain about are not excuses for a failure of hard work; they are legitimate and real challenges that this person has not experienced. That person does not know that it’s not that “not everyone starts off on the same spot”; it’s that many grow up constantly being dragged down and boxed in by the people around them. That person does not know that bigoted speech, whether they agree that it is bigoted or not, leads to harmful action.

But on that last point, your reader will likely learn better. Because he knows that his “wrecking ball” will leave him relatively untouched. But he doesn’t know that the hateful people swinging this wrecking ball with him are real, not a liberal bogeyman. He does not know that marginalized people are going to be hurt; they are going to die because of this. They are going to keep being hurt and keep dying for years because of this. And the people who voted for Trump—however understandable and relatable their motivations might be—are responsible for this, whether they know it or not.

Fallows is traveling again, this time in Wyoming, and he’s also busy working on a new piece for the magazine, so he passed along several “powerful” emails from a reader named Vasav who served in the U.S. military and is the son of Indian immigrants. His first note is from a few weeks ago:

Yes, let’s not demonize Trump voters as a “basket of deplorables.” And no, we shouldn’t give in to their demands that sacrifice our basic, democratic tenets. But a widening income gap and a lack of opportunity, a political class more and more removed from the average voter, and the never-ending wars that seem to be the fate of winning the Cold War and our politicians try to ignore come election time—those are all legitimate gripes that I actually find myself nodding along when Trump talks about them. I would never vote for him or his solutions to these problems. But rather than completely ignore Trumpers, as tempting as it is, they have legitimate gripes that ought to be heard. Their mouthpiece is an oaf and a threat to democracy, women, minorities, and a world order I believe is beneficial to our country and freedom around the world. But their gripes are real, and the price of not listening at all may be more dire than any of us could have imagined.

Yesterday, following the stunning news of Trump’s win, Vasav followed up:

There is one exceptionally annoying narrative that has started to come down, about how rural voters were “making themselves heard” with Trump. The last couple of emails I wrote to you talked about why there is some validity to the claim that middle America is ignored by coastal elites. And to put it in personal perspective, I am a man of color and child of immigrants who was born on one coast, got college degrees, and traveled to work in one of the bougiest parts of the world on the other coast. It is ridiculous for me to tell a poor kid living in a trailer who has no real path to college in today’s America that he’s benefiting from white privilege.

But the flip side is, considering their candidate lost the popular vote, considering in 2012 more votes were cast for Democratic congressmen, and yet despite that the party that has lost raw vote totals controls the totality of two branches of government—well, it’s ridiculous for anyone to say they haven’t been heard. Republicans have disproportionately controlled the government since 2000. The deck is stacked in their favor. And rural Americans have chosen Tea Party candidates and now Donald Trump as their standard bearer.

Everything I said before remains true: There’s a gap that needs to be bridged. I hope Donald Trump can do it. But it should be noted that bridge needs to flow in both directions. It’s not just about listening to the concerns of blue-collar whites; it’s about listening to the concerns of coastal people of color who are now wondering whether middle America will let us stay in this country.

From a personal perspective, I’ve loved and believed in America for a long time, and was inspired that Barack Obama called Chicago his home. Since before I started college in Michigan and just imagined setting foot in the Big House, I believed in middle America. I experienced some racism in the military, but on the whole my love for every part of this country grew.

And now I have to ask: Does the America I’ve always loved, and specifically the middle of this country—the part I’ve defended, gone out of my way to understand, endorsed as a place to live to my skeptical friends—does the America I’ve literally served and fought for still want me around? It’s hard to look at the results and think the answer is still yes.

In another email sent before Election Day, Vasav detailed “some harebrained ideas” for addressing “the fragility of American democracy that is becoming more and more apparent”:

In the short term, enforce the Hatch Act. If members of the government are using their professional position to affect the election, they’re not just violating federal law, they are undermining their oath of office: “To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” A series of firings are too close to a purge for anyone’s liking, but there must be teeth to this law. I believe, perhaps naively, that enough of our public servants will actually feel remorse if pulled to the mat and being told their actions question their integrity to their oath of office and their love of country and constitution. Public apologies won’t do much, but a thorough independent review—as the AG’s office did of Ferguson PD’s emails and correspondence—will force the country to confront the FBI. There’s no disinfectant like sunlight.

Longer term, the gap needs to be bridged. Why is it that growing up in Jersey and now living in Cali, I am far less exposed to Republicans than when I served in the military? Why don’t more liberals join the military? Why do so many Republicans join the government but have no faith in the powers and controls of the federal government as headquartered in D.C.? There is both a socio-economic and a geographic segregation in this country. It needs to be addressed aggressively.

But how? For one, public service looks a lot worse when you’re part of the economic ladder that expects to go to college and earn a boatload of money from the new economy. We need government officers from everywhere and every breadth of society. Government needs to reform by trying to attract the best talent to civil and military service—and not just as campaign consultants.

For another, Fallows’s series on America by air highlights how hard people are working throughout the forgotten heartlands of this country to remake and rebuild their communities to link into and actively push forward the new economy. Investments in education and infrastructure were a boon to the economy throughout the country in the 1870s and 1950s. We are due for another round so that the centers of growth aren’t just where there’s oil and increasingly elite metropolises.

Most importantly, more Americans need to be aware of why and how the levers of power work the way they do, in D.C. and elsewhere. I’m an engineer, with two degrees in the subject and my experience in the military was engineering too. So you know I believe in the value of a technical skill set. But I think every high school senior should learn and debate civics and government. Start with how ours works and has evolved instead of dropping it at the fifth-grade version that children learn and forget with broad strokes on the constitution. But also how democracy, government and politics works around the world and has evolved throughout history. Talk to them about fascist strongmen, about how and why the classical republics gave way to military dictatorships and then feudal systems, tie it into the changing economics, and include lessons in how a parliamentary system works. And do it at an age where they can actually think and process and challenge and learn to buy-in to our system of government.

Finally (and admittedly this is both costly and probably only cosmetic), how annoying is it that the elites of our government sit on the coast, a short train ride away from the elites of our private sectors? Both of our presidential candidates base themselves in our largest city and metro, and naturally the teams they’ve put together have strong ties to NYC as well. It’s literally a morning’s ride on the rails to D.C. I propose Congress and the Supreme Court (and possibly the president) move to either East St. Louis or Kansas City, Kansas. Missouri is a great state that’s both east and west, north and south, Midwest but not. Either side of the state has a large metro that too many of my coastal friends would not be able to find on a map of the U.S. If we moved Congress to the middle of the country, we can both give D.C. voting rights and create a small, federal “District of Lincoln” that forces coastal political and economic elites to worry about their brethren in the middle of the country.

Update from Vasav:

Chris, I’d like to add one addendum. I just talked with a buddy of mine who I served with. He is, like I was, an officer. Unlike me, he stayed in. Also unlike me, he voted for Trump.

I’ll try to keep this short, but he frankly didn’t believe a lot the Trump rhetoric that has me nervous. He also took the time to listen to my concerns and understand how I don’t have the luxury of ignoring that rhetoric. In a small way, Justin restored my faith that, while some Trumpers would not make this country safe for me, there are plenty who would stand by my side if things every really got crazy.

Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump hold signs at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on November 7, 2016. Trump won the state with 51 percent of the vote.Chris Keane / Reuters

A long-time reader, Ben, tries to understand what drove so many Americans to elect Donald Trump yesterday:

So to get it out of the way: I didn’t vote for Trump. So I don’t like the results any better than you and your magazine do. But I did consider supporting Trump here and there, so I think I probably have a slightly better-than-average answer to “how could this have happened?” And I really think it’s kind of simple: Some people voted for Trump, but way more people voted for “stop calling me names and being a bully.”

I think the left was right on gay marriage, at least in the sense of “it should be legal if the government is going to have their hands in it.” But immediately after it became an inevitability, it also became a club: If your pizza place/cake baking business/photography business doesn’t want to be part of it, you get vilified and threatened. If the fringier parts of the left had its way, Brendan Eich’s ouster would have been duplicated a thousand times.

I think the left is right that black people are still treated like a subclass and don’t get anywhere near a fair shake. But traveling down the right road, there were plenty of pit stops that signaled that free speech was an acceptable sacrifice. There was a more-than-general smattering of clues that private opinions would be dug out at any cost and used to get you fired from your job.

The far left took a gamble that calling half the country racist, backwoods, bigoted hicks wouldn’t unite them under literally any alternate flag. It said, “If you aren’t 100 percent with us, you are 100 percent evil” without considering that inevitably this would result in absolutely no motivation for anyone on the right to shift even a little to the left. Give people the impression that you will hate them the same or nearly so for voting Jeb Bush as compared to voting for Trump, and where is the motivation to be socially acceptable with Jeb?

The far left took the gamble, and the moderate left backed them up with a range of active support and silence. And somebody popped up who said whatever he wanted. People called him a racist bigot idiot who wouldn’t fit in in San Francisco, and it bounced off. So he’s a racist and a bigot for real. You think people wouldn't envy his bulletproof vest?

If the left had been responsible with its dominance of culture, media, and social mores, this would have been an easy win for them—more than that, Trump would have never been possible. I would have liked that. At the same time, it’s hard to feel guilty when I see a lot of people who just got done saying “We will destroy everything you believe in and make it impossible to be anything but us” for years and now finding out it backfired.

A bully can be right and still be a bully. The bullied can be wrong and still fight back. I hope this lesson is understood and remembered.

Disagree with Ben? Or, are you an American who voted for Donald Trump and would like to share your thoughts right now? Please send us a note and we’ll post: hello@theatlantic.com. Update from reader Adam, who has a strong dissent against Ben:

I’m a San Francisco native (so yea, a bleeding heart liberal) completing a masters program in Kansas, where I’ve encountered plenty of Trump support, and specifically the sorts of embittered White culture Ben describes. While I’ve met plenty of people on the social right-wing who feel bullied as Ben describes, I do disagree that they have any right to their victimhood—specifically on gay rights and the harassment of business owners who refused service to gay customers.

Ben considers this the left “bullying” the right, but in doing so he overlooks this country’s dark (and RECENT) history of businesses refusing service to minority groups—a comparatively extreme form of bullying. In the communities I visit in Kansas, it is racial and sexual minority groups who must cope with bullying in the day-to-day, sometimes physical sense—far more consequential than the so-called bullying from the media.

Yes, the left is shrill and self-righteous, and sure, people on both sides of the aisle cross the line. The difference is that fundamentally, the right’s positions on cultural issues is to eliminate the liberties of minority groups—religious, sexual, racial, and otherwise, whereas even if the left can be bullies, it’s in the name of increasing individual liberties.

There are ethically gray areas like abortion, sure, but there’s nothing to debate when it comes about the right to receive service at local private businesses and government institutions (i.e. Kim Davis). So, is it really realistic to expect the left (also flawed humans, mind) to reach out to the right on these issues—especially when so many in power, and out of it, continue to campaign aggressively to deny liberties to others? There’s simply no equivalency here. Having friends who are Black/Muslim/Gay, when I hear right-wing rhetoric, I become angry and scared, not put in a place to “hash out differences.”

To Ben’s point: Bottom line, from the standpoint of diplomacy, the left could have done more to court the religious and social right-wing. Maybe won the election. But ethically, it’s the people who hold the myopic, prejudiced, and yes, hateful views who are culpable for this president. I have no sympathy, because the right-wingers I’ve met in Kansas? They are smart enough to know better.

In general, conservatives prefer cultural to materialist analyses of human behavior. For years, for instance, conservatives have insisted that economic distress does not cause jihadist terror. The real source, they insist, is Islamic culture. For decades, they’ve argued that economic distress does not cause unwed pregnancy and drug addiction among African Americans. The real explanation lies with inner city black culture. Given those precedents, you would think conservatives would embrace a cultural rather than economic explanation for Trump’s appeal, especially when the evidence points so strongly in that direction. But when it’s whites acting badly, not blacks or Muslims, suddenly economic distress matters a great deal.

Update from Ben, who first responds to me asking if he’d like me to add his last name for the sake of public attribution:

I betcha I could get fired for that note if people didn’t read it carefully, and you and I both know nobody does. I don’t think the “I don’t like Trump either, but there’s fundamental problems that exist on both sides that made him possible” message would probably parse well.

I like reader Adam’s hand-wave and dance around the actual issues I brought up. I mention a pizza place that never refused to serve anyone and a wedding cake shop, and he brings up Kim Davis. For the record I don’t think scorching Kim Davis was bad, and where vital services are at play, I generally agree with Adam.

But the general immediate dismissal of everything else I bought up—firings for private views, freedom of speech on campus and elsewhere being squelched—is sort of proof of my point. Even without getting into the “let’s change culture to completely cut these people out” aspect being addressed, Adam called everyone on the right a racist bigot who just wants to crush minorities and the LGBT community. That’s his— and a large portion of the left’s—knee-jerk reaction for dismissing all of their problems.

It’s not just not “courting” that Trump vote. I wasn’t suggesting the left should change their views or be disingenuous. I’m just suggesting that it’s not the best tactic to say:

If you are a Republican or conservative in any way, that means you are a homophobic bigot racist. I’m going to immediately assume all your problems are fake and all of your complaints are invalid. I’m going to actively work against you in all things.

And again, this isn’t about winning their votes; it’s about giving them any motivation to care about anything you think at all. I’m not suggesting the left should have been trying to get Hillary in the White House. I’m suggesting that they should have tried to get Jeb Bush campaigning instead of Trump. But, hey, guy, keep doing the same stuff; it’s totally not like you didn’t generate a giant backlash that pushed the worst candidate ever into the presidency or anything.

Sorry, rant over. And yeah, the election really sucks. I abstained from the vote for reasons probably obvious to you if you’ve been tracking my personal politics, but I definitely don’t consider Trump to be anything but a horrible outcome.

The special counsel indicted the Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election, the Department of Justice announced Friday.

On Friday, February 16, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein announced that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, had indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities on charges that including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft. This is the full text of that indictment.

Students have mourned and rallied the public after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High that left 17 dead.

Something was different about the mass shooting this week in Parkland, Florida, in which 14 students and three adults were killed.

It was not only the death toll. The mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High became the deadliest high-school shooting in American history (edging out Columbine, which killed 13 in 1999).

What made Parkland different were the people who stepped forward to describe it. High-school students—the survivors of the calamity themselves—became the voice of the tragedy. Tweets that were widely reported as coming from the students expressed grief for the victims, pushed against false reports, and demanded accountability.

Outrage mobs are chipping away at democracy, one meaningless debate at a time.

The mob was unusually vociferous, even for Twitter. After the California-born ice skater Mirai Nagasu became the first American woman to land a triple axel at the Olympics, the New York Times writer Bari Weiss commented “Immigrants: They get the job done.”

What followed that innocuous tweet was one of the sillier, manufactured controversies I have ever seen on Twitter. Twitter’s socially conscious denizens probably only realized they should be outraged at Weiss after they saw other people being outraged, as is so often the case. Outside of Twitter, some of Weiss’s Times colleagues were also offended by the tweet—and even hurt by it. The critics’objection was that Nagasu isn’t herself an immigrant, but rather the child of immigrants, and so calling her one was an example of “perpetual othering.”

The company’s unusual offer—to give employees up to $5,000 for leaving—may actually be a way to get them to stay longer.

On Monday, Amazon reportedly began a series of rare layoffs at its headquarters in Seattle, cutting several hundred corporate employees. But this week, something quite different is happening at the company’s warehouses and customer-service centers across the country: Amazon will politely ask its “associates”—full-time and part-time hourly employees—if they’d prefer to quit. And if they do, Amazon will pay them as much as $5,000 for walking out the door.

Officially called “The Offer,” this proposition is, according to Amazon, a way to encourage unhappy employees to move on. “We believe staying somewhere you don’t want to be isn’t healthy for our employees or for the company,” Ashley Robinson, an Amazon spokesperson, wrote to me in an email. The amount full-time employees get offered ranges from $2,000 to $5,000, and depends on how long they have been at the company; if they take the money, they agree to never work for Amazon again. (The idea for all this originated at Zappos, the online shoe retailer that Amazon bought in 2009.)

The clear goal of the special counsel is to speak to the American public about the seriousness of Russian interference.

With yet another blockbuster indictment (why is it always on a Friday afternoon?), Special Counsel Robert Mueller has, once again, upended Washington. And this time, it is possible that his efforts may have a wider effect outside the Beltway.

For those following the matter, there has been little doubt that Russian citizens attempted to interfere with the American presidential election. The American intelligence agencies publicized that conclusion more than a year ago in a report issued in January 2017, and it has stood by the analysis whenever it has been questioned. But some in the country have doubted the assertion—asking for evidence of interference that was not forthcoming.

Now the evidence has been laid out in painful detail by the special counsel. If any significant fraction of what is alleged in the latest indictment is true (and we should, of course, remind ourselves that an indictment is just an allegation—not proof), then this tale is a stunning condemnation of Russian activity. A Russian organization with hundreds of employees and a budget of millions of dollars is said to have systematically engaged in an effort (code named “Project Lakhta”) to undermine the integrity of the election and, perhaps more importantly, to have attempted to influence the election to benefit then-candidate Donald Trump. Among the allegations, the Russians:

Tech analysts are prone to predicting utopia or dystopia. They’re worse at imagining the side effects of a firm's success.

The U.S economy is in the midst of a wrenching technological transformation that is fundamentally changing the way people sleep, work, eat, shop, love, read, and interact.

At least, that’s one interpretation.

A second story of this age of technological transformation says that it’s mostly a facade—that the last 30 years have been a productivity bust and little has changed in everyday life, aside from the way everyone reads and watches videos. People wanted flying cars and got Netflix binges instead.

Let’s call these the Disrupt Story and the Dud Story of technology. When a new company, app, or platform emerges, it’s common for analysts to divide into camps—Disrupt vs. Dud—with some yelping that the new thing will change everything and others yawning with the expectation that traditionalism will win out.

In February 2011, Swiss citizens voted in a referendum that called for a national gun registry and for firearms owned by members of the military to be stored in public arsenals.

“It is a question of trust between the state and the citizen. The citizen is not just a citizen, he is also a soldier,” Hermann Suter, who at the time was vice president of the Swiss gun-rights group Pro Tell, told the BBC then. “The gun at home is the best way to avoid dictatorships—only dictators take arms away from the citizens.”

Apparently many of his fellow Swiss agreed. The referendum was easily defeated. Gun ownership in the countryhas deep historic roots and it is tied to mandatory military service for Swiss men between the ages of 18 and 34. Traditionally, soldiers were allowed to keep their weapons at home in order to defend against conquering armies. These fears came close to being realized during the Franco-Prussian War on 1871; as well as World War I, when the Swiss border was threatened; and World War II, when the country feared a Nazi invasion.

Like it or not, the middle class became global citizens through consumerism—and they did so at the mall.

“Okay, we’ll see you in two-and-a-half hours,” the clerk tells me, taking the iPhone from my hand. I’m at the Apple Store, availing myself of a cheap smartphone battery replacement, an offer the company made after taking heat for deliberately slowing down devices. A test run by a young woman typing at a feverish, unnatural pace on an iPad confirms that mine desperately needed the swap. As she typed, I panicked. What will I do in the mall for so long, and without a phone? How far the mall has fallen that I rack my brain for something to do here.

The Apple Store captures everything I don’t like about today’s mall. A trip here is never easy—the place is packed and chaotic, even on weekdays. It runs by its own private logic, cashier and help desks replaced by roving youths in seasonally changing, colored T-shirts holding iPads, directing traffic.

Leggings and yoga gear are common sights at practice rinks. But in competition, gender-coded costumes still prevail.

Last weekend, one of the buzzier stories out of the Olympic ladies’ figure skating short program competition was one you might call … surprisingly surprising. The French figure skater Maé-Bérénice Méité made headlines: for the fact that she skated to a Beyoncé medley, and even more so, for the fact that she did it in pants.

More accurately, she did it in a bedazzled black unitard, but that didn’t stop news outlets and viewers on Twitter from pointing out Méité’s eye-catching, subtly subversive pants. “This French figure skater may not have won a medal, but her pants took people's choice,” raved Yahoo! News, and AOL named Méité’s bodysuit to its list of “most dazzling figure skating outfits” of these Olympic Games.

The director Ryan Coogler's addition to the Marvel pantheon is a superb genre film—and quite a bit more.

Note: Although this review avoids plot spoilers, it does discuss the thematic elements of the film at some length.

After an animated introduction to the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda, Black Panther opens in Oakland in 1992. This may seem an odd choice, but it is in fact quite apt. The film’s director, Ryan Coogler, got his start in the city, having been born there in 1986. His filmmaking career has its roots there, too, as it was the setting for his debut feature, Fruitvale Station.

A bunch of schoolboys (a fictionalized young Coogler perhaps among them) play pickup hoops on a court with a milk-crate basket. But in the tall apartment building above them two black radicals are plotting a robbery. There’s a knock on the door and one of the men looks through the peephole: “Two Grace Jones–lookin’ chicks—with spears!” I won’t recount the rest of the scene, except to note that the commingling of two very different iterations of the term “Black Panther”—the comic-book hero and the revolutionary organization, ironically established just months apart in 1966—is in no way accidental, and it will inform everything that follows.

The special counsel indicted the Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election, the Department of Justice announced Friday.

On Friday, February 16, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein announced that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, had indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities on charges that including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft. This is the full text of that indictment.

Students have mourned and rallied the public after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High that left 17 dead.

Something was different about the mass shooting this week in Parkland, Florida, in which 14 students and three adults were killed.

It was not only the death toll. The mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High became the deadliest high-school shooting in American history (edging out Columbine, which killed 13 in 1999).

What made Parkland different were the people who stepped forward to describe it. High-school students—the survivors of the calamity themselves—became the voice of the tragedy. Tweets that were widely reported as coming from the students expressed grief for the victims, pushed against false reports, and demanded accountability.

Outrage mobs are chipping away at democracy, one meaningless debate at a time.

The mob was unusually vociferous, even for Twitter. After the California-born ice skater Mirai Nagasu became the first American woman to land a triple axel at the Olympics, the New York Times writer Bari Weiss commented “Immigrants: They get the job done.”

What followed that innocuous tweet was one of the sillier, manufactured controversies I have ever seen on Twitter. Twitter’s socially conscious denizens probably only realized they should be outraged at Weiss after they saw other people being outraged, as is so often the case. Outside of Twitter, some of Weiss’s Times colleagues were also offended by the tweet—and even hurt by it. The critics’objection was that Nagasu isn’t herself an immigrant, but rather the child of immigrants, and so calling her one was an example of “perpetual othering.”

The company’s unusual offer—to give employees up to $5,000 for leaving—may actually be a way to get them to stay longer.

On Monday, Amazon reportedly began a series of rare layoffs at its headquarters in Seattle, cutting several hundred corporate employees. But this week, something quite different is happening at the company’s warehouses and customer-service centers across the country: Amazon will politely ask its “associates”—full-time and part-time hourly employees—if they’d prefer to quit. And if they do, Amazon will pay them as much as $5,000 for walking out the door.

Officially called “The Offer,” this proposition is, according to Amazon, a way to encourage unhappy employees to move on. “We believe staying somewhere you don’t want to be isn’t healthy for our employees or for the company,” Ashley Robinson, an Amazon spokesperson, wrote to me in an email. The amount full-time employees get offered ranges from $2,000 to $5,000, and depends on how long they have been at the company; if they take the money, they agree to never work for Amazon again. (The idea for all this originated at Zappos, the online shoe retailer that Amazon bought in 2009.)

The clear goal of the special counsel is to speak to the American public about the seriousness of Russian interference.

With yet another blockbuster indictment (why is it always on a Friday afternoon?), Special Counsel Robert Mueller has, once again, upended Washington. And this time, it is possible that his efforts may have a wider effect outside the Beltway.

For those following the matter, there has been little doubt that Russian citizens attempted to interfere with the American presidential election. The American intelligence agencies publicized that conclusion more than a year ago in a report issued in January 2017, and it has stood by the analysis whenever it has been questioned. But some in the country have doubted the assertion—asking for evidence of interference that was not forthcoming.

Now the evidence has been laid out in painful detail by the special counsel. If any significant fraction of what is alleged in the latest indictment is true (and we should, of course, remind ourselves that an indictment is just an allegation—not proof), then this tale is a stunning condemnation of Russian activity. A Russian organization with hundreds of employees and a budget of millions of dollars is said to have systematically engaged in an effort (code named “Project Lakhta”) to undermine the integrity of the election and, perhaps more importantly, to have attempted to influence the election to benefit then-candidate Donald Trump. Among the allegations, the Russians:

In February 2011, Swiss citizens voted in a referendum that called for a national gun registry and for firearms owned by members of the military to be stored in public arsenals.

“It is a question of trust between the state and the citizen. The citizen is not just a citizen, he is also a soldier,” Hermann Suter, who at the time was vice president of the Swiss gun-rights group Pro Tell, told the BBC then. “The gun at home is the best way to avoid dictatorships—only dictators take arms away from the citizens.”

Apparently many of his fellow Swiss agreed. The referendum was easily defeated. Gun ownership in the countryhas deep historic roots and it is tied to mandatory military service for Swiss men between the ages of 18 and 34. Traditionally, soldiers were allowed to keep their weapons at home in order to defend against conquering armies. These fears came close to being realized during the Franco-Prussian War on 1871; as well as World War I, when the Swiss border was threatened; and World War II, when the country feared a Nazi invasion.

Tech analysts are prone to predicting utopia or dystopia. They’re worse at imagining the side effects of a firm's success.

The U.S economy is in the midst of a wrenching technological transformation that is fundamentally changing the way people sleep, work, eat, shop, love, read, and interact.

At least, that’s one interpretation.

A second story of this age of technological transformation says that it’s mostly a facade—that the last 30 years have been a productivity bust and little has changed in everyday life, aside from the way everyone reads and watches videos. People wanted flying cars and got Netflix binges instead.

Let’s call these the Disrupt Story and the Dud Story of technology. When a new company, app, or platform emerges, it’s common for analysts to divide into camps—Disrupt vs. Dud—with some yelping that the new thing will change everything and others yawning with the expectation that traditionalism will win out.

Leggings and yoga gear are common sights at practice rinks. But in competition, gender-coded costumes still prevail.

Last weekend, one of the buzzier stories out of the Olympic ladies’ figure skating short program competition was one you might call … surprisingly surprising. The French figure skater Maé-Bérénice Méité made headlines: for the fact that she skated to a Beyoncé medley, and even more so, for the fact that she did it in pants.

More accurately, she did it in a bedazzled black unitard, but that didn’t stop news outlets and viewers on Twitter from pointing out Méité’s eye-catching, subtly subversive pants. “This French figure skater may not have won a medal, but her pants took people's choice,” raved Yahoo! News, and AOL named Méité’s bodysuit to its list of “most dazzling figure skating outfits” of these Olympic Games.

Like it or not, the middle class became global citizens through consumerism—and they did so at the mall.

“Okay, we’ll see you in two-and-a-half hours,” the clerk tells me, taking the iPhone from my hand. I’m at the Apple Store, availing myself of a cheap smartphone battery replacement, an offer the company made after taking heat for deliberately slowing down devices. A test run by a young woman typing at a feverish, unnatural pace on an iPad confirms that mine desperately needed the swap. As she typed, I panicked. What will I do in the mall for so long, and without a phone? How far the mall has fallen that I rack my brain for something to do here.

The Apple Store captures everything I don’t like about today’s mall. A trip here is never easy—the place is packed and chaotic, even on weekdays. It runs by its own private logic, cashier and help desks replaced by roving youths in seasonally changing, colored T-shirts holding iPads, directing traffic.

The director Ryan Coogler's addition to the Marvel pantheon is a superb genre film—and quite a bit more.

Note: Although this review avoids plot spoilers, it does discuss the thematic elements of the film at some length.

After an animated introduction to the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda, Black Panther opens in Oakland in 1992. This may seem an odd choice, but it is in fact quite apt. The film’s director, Ryan Coogler, got his start in the city, having been born there in 1986. His filmmaking career has its roots there, too, as it was the setting for his debut feature, Fruitvale Station.

A bunch of schoolboys (a fictionalized young Coogler perhaps among them) play pickup hoops on a court with a milk-crate basket. But in the tall apartment building above them two black radicals are plotting a robbery. There’s a knock on the door and one of the men looks through the peephole: “Two Grace Jones–lookin’ chicks—with spears!” I won’t recount the rest of the scene, except to note that the commingling of two very different iterations of the term “Black Panther”—the comic-book hero and the revolutionary organization, ironically established just months apart in 1966—is in no way accidental, and it will inform everything that follows.